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Macintosh Operating System

Mac operating system is referred to as a trade mark which is used by Apple Corporation to name the series of GUI operating systems. The full name of these computer systems is known as Macintosh computers.

History of Macintosh

Apple was established in 1976. However it was in January 1984 when Apple launched its first Operating system with the name Macintosh. Macintosh gained its popularity due to graphical user interface. Initially Mac operating system was part of every Mac computer. However this operating system was also available at Apple retail outlets. The original design of the Mac OS was based on the Lisa operating system. Jeff Raskin was one of the founders of Mac operating system. Burrell Smith was the key technician and member of the Mac project. However later in 1981 Steve jobs himself took the responsibility of the entire project. Having heard about the GUI technology being developed at Xerox PARC Steve jobs formed a strategy. He gave away Apple shares in return he exchanged Smalltalk Tools and Alto computers. The early Mac ROM was about 64kb. The concepts like drag /drop and pop up menus. The strong marketing efforts along with the smart operating system were key reasons for Mac’s success.

Development Overtime

Over the years there were innumerable developments in the Mac OS. Early Macintosh OS was a combination of dual softwares having “System” and “finder” each having its own version of softwares. Mac operating systems are divided into two families one is Classic family (having apple’s original codes), and the other one is Mac OS X family (UNIX and NeXTSTEP based). Classical Mac OS is a total graphical OS. It is considered really simple to operate and use. More over it is considered worth while to support Multitasking. However the earlier versions of classic Mac were condemned of very limited memory be short of protected memory and having conflicts. This is also responsible for providing support for the additional devices and a conflict in operating system extensions. More over trouble shooting this Mac family was considered as a really time taking and trial and error process. However over the years the Mac systems developed along side and ye weaknesses were removed thereof. Apple introduced a new version of OS known as Mac OS X which was complied largely for Power PC based Macintosh. Another project of Apple was disclosed in 1992 with the name of Star Trek. The aim of the Apple computers is to provide a basic operating system that would support well the Intel’s X86 processors. However this secret project was cancelled in 1993. It was in the same year due to many reasons.

Mac Operating System X

The weaknesses of the classic system were covered in Mac operating system X version. X is s roman number which means 10. It is a well-known part of the brand. This operating system is s UNIX based OS. The first version of the Mac OS was released in 1999. The desktop version of this OS known as Mac OS X v10.0 “Cheetah” came to surface in March 2001. This whole series of Mac OS X computers is named on the family of cats. With the success of this OS apple also took interest in making iPhone OS, iPod and Apple TV. This Operating system is based on the Mac kernel Architecture. Mac OS X is considered to be as the 10th version of Apple’s OS for MAC computers. Mac OS architecture is based on encrusted framework. This layered frame work is really helpful in aiding quick development of applications for providing accessible code for general tasks.